Sharing replays of Instagram Stories live videos for 24 hours.

“Stories,” a Snapchatty feature for imperfect sharing.

People only post the highlights of their life on Instagram, so today the app adds its own version of “Stories” to poach goofy, off-the-cuff, everyday content from Snapchat. It works exactly like Snapchat Stories, allowing you to post 24-hour ephemeral photo and video slideshows that disappear. But because Instagram Stories appear at the top of the old feed, your followers will inevitably see them without you needing to build a new audience in a different app.

Instagram Stories is rolling out globally for iOS and Android over the next few weeks.

You could call it Snapchat for adults, a way for brands to post more without overwhelming people’s feeds, an alternative to Instagram’s Like-driven success theater or a blatant ripoff.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom wouldn’t disagree with you. When confronted about Instagram Stories being a clone of Snapchat Stories, he surprisingly admitted “They deserve all the credit,” but insisted “This isn’t about who invented something. This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it.” Read my full interview with Kevin Systrom here.

Instagram moments before and now.
With 500 million monthly active users, 300 million daily actives and now 250 million users on its Direct messaging feature, Instagram is enormous expansion for what Snapchat pioneered.

Facebook wants to own more unique, must-see original sharing that was reportedly down 15 percent year over year as of early 2016. But boosting sharing frequency has been hard for Instagram because people only post their most polished selfies, sunsets and meals.

Systrom admits he hadn’t shared to Instagram at all during the six days before we met because none of the moments seemed special enough. “Instagram is a curated feed, but you only get to see the highlights,” Systrom laments. Instagram’s sweat and blemish-hiding filters encouraged that social norm. And while Instagram recently started sorting its feed, people still worry that posting multiple times in a row will seem like they’re spamming their friends, so they hold back.